(click to enlarge image)
Pt. 1 of 3
Long before I ever experienced St. Nicholas, the Ashley-Huber Breaker was on the list of sites to photograph. Construction for the Maxwell Breaker began in 1892 and was completed in 1895, named after DL&W Co. President, Roger Maxwell. And while the name has changed many times over the years, it was a move in 1928 that gave Ashley-Huber its legend; they experimented with dying their coal blue. Then, in 1976 – after 81 years in business – the colliery shut its doors for good. Currently, the Huber Breaker Preservation Society, a non-profit corporation, is busy doing its best to preserve the breaker and the surrounding land before time and teenage vandals take too large of a toll.
(Ashley-Huber Breaker, August 18, 1954,
courtesy of the Library of Congress)
Crazy images Tom, it's like we stepped out of reality into a fantasy world of surreal shapes... Would love to see the context for some of these, but if this is just part one, perhaps furthers episodes will enlighten the benighted among us...
ReplyDelete:-)
At first I was uninspired by the big spaces only to turn my attention towards the patterns and textures all around me. The first shot from Pt. 2 will explain the final two images, for sure. The rest? Well, they'll remain a mystery…
ReplyDeleteWhen I woke up this morning I was still thinking about the strange and vaguely dangerous looking forms here, and as the shower splashed some awakening back into me, I remembered having seen some things like these in a medieval torture museum in Belgium once a while back... are you sure this was a coal breaker and not a human breaker ?
ReplyDelete(laughs) I'm quite sure that, at some point, a human was broken by those. Dangerous places to work, on so many levels…
ReplyDeleteFunny conversation :) Really enjoying these photos. I think I like the mystery.
ReplyDeleteThere's something to be said about leaving it to the imagination, right? Right. Thanks for stopping by, Liz, and I'm glad you're enjoying the photos. Much more to come…
ReplyDelete